In today's computing environments, applications rely on operating systems to function. Operating systems provide a software platform on top of which applications can run. Operating systems perform basic tasks, such as recognizing input from a keyboard and mouse, sending output to a display screen, keeping track of files and directories on a hard disk drive, and controlling peripheral devices such as printers. Modern operating systems take a modular approach to supporting various applications. For example, a given operating system may make available a number of functions—those functions residing in a series of programming modules. However, a given application may only need a few of those functions. Consequently, programming for all of the functions provided by the operating system need not be loaded into a computer's memory—only the programming for those functions used by the application.
When an application is executed and loaded into a computer's memory, the operating system identifies and also loads into memory each of the operating system's modules that supply functions needed by the application. Such a module might include programming for presenting an interface enabling a user to select a printer and various options for printing a document. All applications compatible with the operating system can call on that module when a user desires to print. Beneficially, the user need only become familiar with a single interface when printing regardless of the application being used.
Like the example of the print interface, many of an operating system's modules supply functions that require user interaction. Often, however, it is desirable for other programming to provide the necessary interaction needed to utilize a given operating system module. For example, a user may desire that programming operating on a server print a document. Where the server is geographically separated from the user, the user is not able to provide the interaction needed to direct the programming on the server to print the document. The user must instead rely on other programming operating on the server to supply the needed interaction. Unfortunately, programming designed to mimic human interaction is often cumbersome and unreliable.
This problem reveals a need for a method for intercepting a function call to a module that collects data provided through a user interface redirecting the function call to a module that collects the data programmatically. However, the same techniques used to achieve this goal can be used for a variety of other purposes.